Summary

“The Depressed Person” describes the seemingly endless failed attempts, strategies, and therapies that an unnamed depressed woman tries in order to alleviate the many symptoms of her lifelong depression. Most of the story is subtly told in a flashback, gradually getting to the present-tense near the very end of the story. The depressed person never makes any permanent or substantial progress towards improving their own mental health. Instead, each new potential moment of progress is somehow taken by The depressed person as a reason to deepen or double-down on her own established loop of self-critical and self-defeating thoughts.

The story begins with the depressed person’s description of how, as a young girl, she was often unjustly placed in the center of conflict between her two divorcing parents. Specifically, her parents viciously argued over who would pay for their daughter’s necessary...